Tuesday, October 09, 2012

The influence of humans on the emissions of the greenhouse gas methane dates back to Roman times, which is much earlier than previously assumed. These conclusions of Utrecht University researchers, the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and international fellow-researchers were published in the scientific magazineNatureon 4 October.

It has long been assumed that man only started to make a major contribution to the emission of methane from the Industrial Revolution onwards. However, ten years ago, the famous American climatologist William Ruddiman suggested that humans influenced the climate much sooner, but his hypothesis received much criticism.

Little amounts of old atmosphere is trapped in air bubbles that are located in Greenland ice. Sapart and her colleagues developed a technique with which they could determine the origin of the methane with unprecedented accuracy.

Methane can end up in the atmosphere in different ways. It originates in wet areas, such as swamps and rice fields, and is formed during the combustion of biomass and fossil fuels, and it may be released from so-called mud volcanoes. The technique used by Sapart and her colleagues has made it possible to make a distinction between the different sources.

“Each source reveals itself by its unique fingerprint”, explains Sapart. “The ratio between regular methane and its stable carbon isotope, which is methane in which the carbon atom has one neutron more, and thus is slightly heavier, is unique. With our technique, we can determine the isotope ratio much more accurately than before.”

The researchers compared the emission of methane per source to other data about the period concerned, such as the climate variability, the population and land use data. This has clearly revealed several periods of higher methane emissions originating from the burning of biomass.

For instance, the starting point of the measurements coincided with the peak of the Roman Empire. The huge population burnt a considerable amount of wood. Researchers discovered that the burning of biomass decreased in the subsequent period in concert with the decline of the Roman Empire. The population grew considerably later on in the Middle Ages, and researchers observed another increase in the amount of methane from this source during this period.

The researchers also compared their data to information about the use of land by humans. There again, they discovered a connection between the emissions of methane due to the growing of crops and the area used by humans for agriculture, for example. “These results support Ruddiman’s hypothesis”, says Sapart.

“This research is a good example of the added value you can achieve when you combine experimental research with computer models”, concludes SRON researcher Dr. Sander Houweling.

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